


Old Men in Love

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Not Quite Retirement Lock, Past Injury, Pining, Reunion, Romance, Supporting Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:46:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5593555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years have passed since a tragic accident left John a widower. Mired in guilt and self-blame, and with a permanant limp that is very real, he's broken off his relationship with Sherlock and with the rest of the world save his adult daughter Kate. But something is happening in Sherlock's life and he's rather insistent that John share it with him. </p><p>A tale of bygones, forgiveness and old men in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Counting the Ashtrays

**Author's Note:**

> Four chapters - and three are written and nearly ready to go. This one won't take too long to post in its entirety.

He stands before the mirror, fiddles with his tie, adjusts his collar and smooths imaginary wrinkles from his coat. The suit is new, the most expensive one he’s ever owned, and while it’s off the rack, it’s been meticulously tailored to fit him. Kate had brought a tailor to his flat, had overseen the entire process, and had not seemed the least bit embarrassed during the over-zealous pinning and pinching and measuring process. 

The result is far better than he could have hoped.

He looks good. Good for sixty-three, at least. Good for a widower who’s taken a bullet to the shoulder, who’s living with one kidney and a permanent limp and a cane he’ll never forget because he can’t get out of a bloody chair without it. He’s carrying a few extra pounds around the middle, but what man of his age isn’t? He’s still got his hair, though it can’t even be called salt and pepper anymore. He raises his hand to his upper lip, runs thumb and finger over the mustache he’s worn since Mary died. She’d hated it once, and he’d stayed clean-shaven throughout his marriage. But she’s gone now, and he’s alone. He can do what he wants with his face now, and wear his old, comfortable jumpers, and eat biscuits for breakfast and leave coffee mugs on the bed stand and let the milk go bad in the fridge. 

He tries on a smile. He doesn’t smile as often as he used to – hasn’t for quite some time. He doesn’t much like the man he’s become, but doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it at this point in his life. He’s made his choices and lives with the fall-out. Kate’s on her own now, happy in her career, and while she pops in more often than he’d expect her to, he isn’t the fulcrum of her life, and can hardly expect to be. 

He checks his mobile for the time – he’s well ahead of schedule – then sighs and looks in the mirror again. He has a sudden, nearly irresistible desire to shave – to get rid of the mustache altogether. Kate tells him he’d look years younger without it, but he’s old and he’s stubborn and he likes how it warms his face in the winter. Not that it’s winter now, but it will be soon enough.

Besides, it’s a statement, one he can hide behind.

He doesn’t leave the flat very often these days. Mired in guilt, in regret, in wrong turns and sorrows, he sits in his chair and reads, stares out the window, limps into the kitchen to make tea and a sandwich, watches far too much telly. He may claim he’s working on a book, but every time he starts, he loses himself in bewildering memories, crushing pain. The flat is quiet without Kate and her friends, without Mary. Without Sherlock bounding up the stairs and bursting in, without Kate screeching his name and hugging his too-long, lanky legs about the knees. Kate comes and goes – brings him groceries, insists he walk to the park with her when the weather is nice and she has enough time to slow to his laboured walking pace. She’s long ago stopped trying to convince him to resume his old life, to see Sherlock. Everyone has. It’s been five years, after all, and even the most persistent, annoying people will eventually give up and move on in the face of extreme stubbornness and unwavering resolve.

The day is mild, not quite sunny, but pleasant and clear. A perfect day for an auspicious occasion for a man who deserves much more than this highest of honours. He waits on the pavement only three minutes, weight shifted to his good leg, before the promised car arrives. It slides up beside him and the driver gets out to open the door. John is proficient at handling himself with the cane, and gets inside with a minimum of fuss. The cane fits neatly beside him in a car of this size, and he holds it in one hand, the gloves Kate insisted he bring clasped tightly in the other. He takes a steadying breath, then slowly turns his head. He hasn’t seen Sherlock in half a decade, but this is no chance meeting, and he is mentally prepared.

“Hello,” he says. His voice catches a bit and he clears his throat. 

Sherlock, busy cataloguing him, doesn’t immediately return the greeting. His eyes, quick and bright, wrinkled at the corners, move from offending mustache to impeccably tailored coat to metal cane with worn rubber tip. 

“I made one impossible demand – set one non-negotiable condition.” His eyes move from the cane to John’s right leg, studying the angle at which his knee is bent, the relative size of one thigh to the other. “I agreed to attend this ceremony and receive this honour only if you would share the day with me.”

His voice is as it always was. He sounds satisfied, not surprised. 

John’s eyes are on Sherlock’s hands where they rest on his thighs. 

“Mycroft said you’d come,” continues Sherlock quietly. The tone of his voice is so different now he could be a different person altogether. “I didn’t believe it until you got in the car.”

John shifts in the seat, grunts out an old man’s hmph. “I wasn’t about to let you use me as an excuse to get out of something – something like _this_.”

Sherlock’s little finger – the one on his left hand – twitches. John jerks his eyes upward and just catches the look of pleasure, of amusement, as it flits across his old friend’s face.

He digs his right hand into his thigh as his left clutches the head of his cane. His shoulders tense and he closes his eyes, slowly releasing a long breath as he realises, too late, the subterfuge. 

He’s been had. Quite thoroughly. 

And it is with the most profound sense of surprised relief, and not an ounce of betrayal or distress, that he turns to Sherlock and says, shaking his head. “You _wanted_ this. You’d have gone anyway – even if I’d said no.”

Sherlock grins.

“You’re still going, you realise. Your name’s on the list. The car won’t stop until we’re inside the gates and you’d make quite a scene refusing to get out at that point, or footing it back to the gate and coercing the guard to open it.”

John wants to say that he wouldn’t miss this for the world. He wants to say that he’s proud of Sherlock, and honoured by the invitation, conniving and self-serving as it is. He wants to thank Sherlock for not giving up on him, for going to this extent to get him in the same room with him again, in the backseat of a car with tinted windows and luxurious leather seats and a driver who knows his business. He wants to be angry, but he’s not. He wants to cling to the guilt that’s consumed him for so long, to his stubborn resolve that he’s good for no one, that his selfishness has caused enough pain, enough loss. But one glance at Sherlock, one moment spent in the confines of this car with him, one minute being dissected under his scrutinizing gaze, and all resolve fails.

“You look good.” Sherlock pulls at the cuff of his shirt, toys with the silver cufflinks.

John scoffs. _Sherlock_ looks good. He does not. He eases into their old rapport. “Kate helped with the suit.” 

“Of course she did. Your daughter has exquisite taste – no idea where she got it. She’s meeting us there – wearing a fascinator of her own design, I’m told. It will be huge for her, you realise. Free nation-wide publicity. Don’t thank me – she already has.” He smiles, and John suddenly envies Kate her time with Sherlock, and doesn’t hate her for her deception, for it’s obvious now that her part in this scheme is deeper than helping with his suit.

She’d always loved Sherlock, and she’d just entered uni when it had all happened – when Mary tried to leave him, when he’d been spending far more time scampering about London with Sherlock than at home, when he’d been her friend and not really her lover ( _everyone’s friend, no one’s lover_ ). When she’d challenged him at last, asked him to confront it. The unnamed thing. The elephant in the room. 

He hadn’t been ready. 

He’d been angry – had shouted. Denials and lies, high volume, but he’d not even been able to fool himself with them. He’d grabbed his coat and fled the flat, and she’d come after him, and they’d been arguing on the street corner in the rain, oblivious, when a passing car swerved, skidded into them, leaving Mary dead and John lame and Sherlock as alone and bewildered as John.

He’s less bewildered now, John realises. He’s deduced something, or Kate has and come to him with it.

They don’t speak of it now. 

“I take it you didn’t have time to shave?” Sherlock is looking out the opposite window, giving the mustache he hated as much as Mary did a sideways nod.

John turns away to hide his smile. He smooths down his mustache and looks out the window, but doesn’t respond. They ride in silence for several minutes.

“Are you nervous?” John asks at last. They’re getting close, and John is, naturally, nervous himself. He’s about to walk into Buckingham Palace. Sit in a stately room with the King of England. 

Sherlock rests his gaze on John a long moment. 

“Not so much,” he murmurs at last. “Not anymore.” 

He turns his head away again to gaze out the window, and John studies his familiar profile.

He’s not changed. Not changed at all.

The car slows and Sherlock glances at him, sits up straighter, pulls at the fabric of his trousers at his knees. The last time John drove through these gates, the circumstances were quite different. He wasn’t actually dressed for the occasion, but at least he was dressed. Sherlock, on the other hand….

“Mycroft claims they’ve counted the ashtrays,” Sherlock says, reading his mind, as the car is admitted and pulls forward.

John snorts. After all these years, the memory of their first visit to Buckingham Palace still evokes that feeling of camaraderie, of you and me against the world. It is a pivotal moment in the _us_ that was, but never _quite_ was.

Their eyes lock. John lets out a slow breath. That particular ashtray sits on his bed stand. He places his reading glasses in it every night when he closes his book and turns off the light. He didn’t take it with him when he left 221B, but it made its way back to him nonetheless, a birthday gift from Sherlock on his sixtieth. He’d never acknowledged it, but not a day's gone by since that he hasn’t seen it and thought of Sherlock.

The car has stopped, and the driver opens John’s door. He releases another slow breath, and his hand clutches his cane. He nods, a bit of self-encouragement. As he begins the slow scoot and turn toward the door, a hand on his shoulder stills him.

“Wait.”

John turns his head, just a fraction, and Sherlock’s hands settle on his shoulders. He brushes something invisible from his lapel, then adjusts John’s tie minutely and smooths down his collar. John is still. He barely breathes. He cannot believe he can feel like this. Breathless and young and on top of his game when he’s spent five years hiding, punishing himself, growing old.

Sherlock drops his hands, and smiles, and John slides carefully out, righting himself with his crutch. He stands there, blinking against the resurgence of the sun, as Sherlock unfolds himself from the car.

Kate is there, beside Mycroft, and there are smiles and handshakes and introductions no one needs. Mycroft looks old, and tired, and extremely grateful that John is here. 

Then, as they begin to move into the palace, Sherlock takes John’s arm. Only he doesn’t quite take it – not as one would to help someone with limited mobility – but instead, as if he is the one who needs the support.

As if Sherlock is arriving on John’s arm, and not the other way around.

_TBC_


	2. Brothers Truce

ooOOOoo

They’re seated together – John, Mycroft, Kate – on cushioned but otherwise utilitarian chairs, arranged in precise rows in the opulent ballroom. To say that the room is red is like saying that the ocean is deep. The ocean is _vastly_ deep and the room is _immensely_ red. They have good seats – John is seated on the aisle in the second row – and he is trying to sit still, trying not to crane his neck from side to side, from ceiling to floor, while beside him Mycroft appears to exhibit all the excitement of waiting for a news broadcast to begin. Sherlock has been whisked away – protocol talk, Mycroft has explained – and John imagines him in a small room with the other honourees, eying an ashtray on a side table and assessing its size relative to his pockets.

At least he has pockets this time around.

Mycroft has told him, on the long, slow walk from their entry point into the palace to this room, that there are a hundred honorees, and each is allowed only three guests. 

John has not seen Sherlock in five years, yet Sherlock still counts him among the three most important people in his life. That Kate shares this platform with him is a bit of a puzzle. Sherlock has always been family – whether father or big brother or beloved uncle matters not. That Kate has been seeing him through this chasm is not a betrayal. His problem is with himself, not with Sherlock, or his daughter. But there are others, perhaps, who Sherlock could have – should have – invited. His parents are gone now, and Mrs. Hudson too infirm for an outing of this magnitude, but Molly Hooper comes to mind, and Greg Lestrade. John spends a moment imagining Molly here, nervously wringing her hands, or Lestrade, uncomfortable and trying to break John’s composure.

The ceremony begins precisely at eleven o’clock as the king enters with his guard. They rise as one, sing the national anthem, then sit again, and wait through a well-organized yet bewildering array of formalities and awards. 

John watches the doorway where each honouree appears in turn. He imagines Sherlock behind the scenes, deducing the other recipients, determining the life story of the woman who’ll go just before him by the faint scuff marks on her sensible heels and the callous on her middle finger. He’ll be immaculately dressed, smartly attired, impatiently waiting his turn. A child prodigy still, trapped in the body of a sixty-year old, not at all impressed with the pomp and ceremony or the medal and insignia bestowed upon him.

The bloody Royal Victorian Order – for personal service to the Monarchy.

Sherlock is one of the last to appear in the doorway. John imagines he’d been loitering, or having a look behind a door or two in the corridor. He does exactly what the others have done before him as they received a similar award – kneels on one knee on the investiture stool as it is brought forward, dips his head as the sword is touched to each shoulder, stands very still as the medal is bestowed, exchanges quiet words with the king, shakes his hand and proceeds out.

And no matter that he’s seen a similar order of things ninety times already this morning, John is filled with something indescribable, something that makes his lonely heart ache with pride.

Then it is all over, except for champagne and photographs. 

He hadn’t expected all the photographs.

Mycroft hadn’t told John what, exactly, Sherlock had done to gain the attention of the Monarchy, though it wasn’t really that difficult to guess. He’d put dozens of criminals behind bars in his years as Britain’s only consulting detective, but the apprehension of the man who somehow managed to disinter the late great Queen and hold her corpse for ransom has Sherlock’s name written all over it.

And while that is Sherlock’s victory, and has nothing to do with John, he certainly has not been forgotten over the past years as half of the team of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

And apparently, Sherlock is getting tired of hearing compliments on the mustache.

“It does not look distinguished,” he murmurs as they pose, again, at the reception following the ceremony. “It makes you look like your grandfather.”

“My grandfather didn’t have a mustache,” John replies through his smile as another young woman comes forward, mobile in hand.

“Your grandmother, then.” Sherlock takes John’s arm again.

“Careful,” John says. “I could tell you you’re far too old to be putting product in your hair.”

“Age is a number, nothing more.” Sherlock hands him another glass of champagne. “Your daughter is chatting with Beatrice Overbrook.”

John has no idea who Beatrice Overbrook is. 

“You have no idea who Beatrice Overbrook is.” He gives a dramatic sigh. “Chief purchaser at Harrods. You’ll be pleased to know that Harvey Nichols and Fenwicks are also represented – oh, look. That’s Ian Fillmore with her now.”

John turns his head slowly to look at Sherlock, ignoring the man who is clearly enamored with his daughter’s hat.

“From Fenwicks. Of course.” Sherlock’s eyes light up from somewhere deep inside, somewhere suspiciously close to his heart, John sees, and he takes John’s arm, as he’s done liberally, and with ease, since they arrived at the palace more than three hours ago.

“Wait.” John sees another group of mobile-wielding guests headed their way. He remembers, now, the awards for _Service to the Fashion Industry_. He’d scoffed at those, inwardly of course, just as he’d had a private chuckle for the old gentleman who’d been honoured for service to the sheep industry. “Sherlock – what about Molly? Or Lestrade?”

“They understood, John,” Sherlock says. He turns, still on John’s arm, as a man sporting new insignia raises a mobile, question as of yet unvoiced. “Of course – may as well get one now with the ridiculous thing before he shaves it off tonight.”

John makes a show of twisting the ends of the mustache so they curl a bit, and he’s scowling at Sherlock in what will become a forever-treasured photograph for the young man in question. 

“Greg and Molly _understood_?” he repeats. He waves to Kate, who is walking toward them, beaming. 

“They’ll be at Angelo’s after,” Sherlock says. “Lestrade says he’s coming to your ceremony, so I’m afraid Mycroft is out.”

John laughs. _His_ ceremony. “Of course. He’s my third – I’ll let him know he’s in, then.”

Sherlock gives him the kind of smile that made John’s heart melt when it graced his young daughter’s face. He tucks it away for later consideration. It heats the edges of his loneliness, and he doesn’t quite know how to answer it, so he looks up at his daughter and directs his shining eyes at her instead.

It occurs to him, as she embraces Sherlock, then kisses John’s cheek and hugs him tightly about the neck, that Sherlock has orchestrated this event for the most selfish of reasons, and the most unselfish. He’s clearly had access to the list of honourees _and_ their guests. He’s invited Kate instead of Greg or Molly as her presence eases John’s mind, but also to give him an inside edge in making sure that John would carry this thing through. And somehow, he’s managed to put Kate in front of people who can help her career in the process. 

As Kate, eyes still shining, tells them of her chat with the head buyer at Harrods, John notices Mycroft a few yards off, standing with a flute of champagne in one hand, leaning against his umbrella, and speaking quietly with a man of his own age, as dour as anyone John has seen today. Has something changed between Sherlock and Mycroft? He’s been witness to no harsh words, no smooth insults, nothing but an odd sort of cordialness, stiff and laboured, between the two. 

Has Mycroft, somehow, unbelievably, earned Sherlock’s respect? Or is this a truce – uneasy but holding? 

He realizes how interminably long five years can be, and how it can pass in the mere blink of an eye.

Another request for a photograph. This time Kate offers to take it and the woman in uniform– John clearly remembers she was awarded the Order of the Bath – stands between them. She is taller than John. Taller than Sherlock, even. Sherlock’s hand is on his elbow behind her back, and he thinks they must look utterly ridiculous, but it’s Sherlock’s day, and he agreed to be here, didn’t he? The woman shakes their hands, then leans in – and down – and whispers into John’s ear.

“I hope, Dr. Watson, that you’ll be resuming your blog, then?”

He hasn’t written a thing since Mary died.

He nods, because it’s easier to do that than to voice anything at all, and she beams at him and shakes Sherlock’s hand, and he congratulates her, too. 

He’s acting so unlike himself that John is beginning to wonder if he’s somehow landed himself in an alternate reality, one where Sherlock has acceptable social skills, and thinks about others, and has no unkind words for his brother, and behaves himself inside Buckingham Palace. Good God, he’s probably even wearing _pants_ , John realises. 

They have been standing far too long, and John’s leg aches. Sherlock, impossibly, sees it even before Kate does, for he excuses himself and walks over to Mycroft while Kate takes his arm and insists he sit for a minute. John watches Sherlock and Mycroft but cannot hear what they say. But Mycroft glances at him and nods, and Sherlock says something back. They look at each other a moment, then Sherlock extends a hand, and Mycroft takes it.

Then Sherlock is hurrying back toward them, and suggests that they take their leave – the car is waiting, after all, and Mycroft is retired now, and doesn’t have full control of a private fleet of cars any more, and this one is needed to pick up some minor royal from a private drug rehab facility in Bath.

Kate comes with them, and sits between them, chatting with Sherlock as John closes his eyes.

And thinks.

Mycroft had come to him a month ago, rapping on his flat door at six o’clock on a Sunday evening. John had been expecting a delivery from the Indian restaurant across the street, and had opened the door to this somber face from the past, holding up two paper bags of take-out, and had resignedly invited him in to sit among the detritus of a weekend spent in front of the telly watching football and reading a rather horrid crime novel – one he’d figured out on page seventy-six.

Mycroft had not wasted words. Sherlock was to be knighted for service to the Monarchy - _personal_ service he’d emphasized – but he’d made John’s presence at the ceremony a condition to his participation. John must come – as a personal favour to Mycroft, if nothing else. And when John had suggested that Sherlock ask him himself if this was such a life or death matter, Mycroft had raised an eyebrow and reminded John that Sherlock had, in the eighteen months following Mary’s death, sent John 365 unanswered text messages, made forty unreturned phone calls, innumerable e-mails and had knocked on this very door sixteen times. He had pulled his mobile out, and was reading the numbers off a document stored there.

“Well, that was three and a half years ago,” John had grumbled.

Mycroft’s shoulders had eased, and it took him only an hour more, and a take-away stain on his impeccable suit, to secure John’s commitment.

He’d been quite happy to let John believe Sherlock was trying to use him to get out of a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

John imagined, now, eyes closed and half-asleep in the backseat of this magnificent limo, that Mycroft had portrayed John’s reaction as kicking and screaming instead of resigned acceptance, more a guilty man who’s accepted his fate than an innocent one being dragged to the gallows.

When the car pulls up in front of Angelo’s – his son had already taken over the business the last time John had been here, Jesus Christ, the night before Mary died – Sherlock doesn’t wait for the driver to open his door. Molly is on the pavement, waiting, and she embraces him and tries out the soon-to-be-hated ‘Sir Sherlock’ even before John gets his cane in order and struggles out of the car.

It’s like a tired cliché in a romantic movie when his leg buckles under him. He falls heavily to the pavement as Kate makes an ineffective grab for him and Sherlock whirls around and drops to his knees, looking so stricken and guilty that John cannot help but drop his head into his hands and laugh through the burning pain in his leg. 

The world has been turned on its ear, but he’s still John, and at this moment, he has to know – he _must_ know – if this changed being at his side is really Sherlock Holmes.

“Sherlock,” he manages as Sherlock takes one elbow and Lestrade the other. “Tell me – are you wearing pants or aren’t you?”

If Kate finds the question odd, or Molly, or Greg, they don’t say. All eyes are on Sherlock, though, as he hands John his cane.

“No,” he answers. “I’m not.”

The world rights itself, though it’s edged slightly off-kilter once again as Sherlock takes John’s arm, and walks with him into Angelo’s.

_TBC_


	3. His Final Vow

ooOOOoo

The restaurant is small, quiet and nearly deserted. They sit facing each other at their table, nursing mugs of tea long grown cold, silent pauses stretching out not uncomfortably between them. A candle burns warmly at John’s elbow.

The celebration is over. Everyone else has gone home – Kate and her boyfriend, Molly and her husband, Greg and Billy and Mrs. Hudson and her niece. When Kate leaves, she doesn’t ask how John is getting home, or insist he come with her, or even ask how his leg is feeling. She simply kisses him goodbye, and leaves him sitting there across from Sherlock, and hurries from the restaurant hand in hand with Clinton. 

John picks up the medal the king himself placed around Sherlock’s neck only hours before. Sherlock hasn’t discarded it – not really. It’s been passed around from hand to hand, though, and made its way back to Sherlock, and is lying on the table beside him. John hands him the medal. “You should do something with this – put it back around your neck, or in your pocket.”

Sherlock shrugs, but he takes the medal and places it in his inside breast pocket, then pats it in place. He doesn’t say anything, but he’s still looking at John, and he seems like he has something to say, but doesn’t quite know how to start.

“You deserve that, you know.” John nods at the insignia still displayed on his lapel. “You shouldn’t be so cavalier about the whole thing.”

“Oh?” Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “You think not?”

“Of course I think not. I should have known you were behind the Brinker case. Personal service to the Monarchy, Sherlock? Your whole life….”

“Hmm.” Sherlock glances around the room, then lets his eyes settle on John again. He speaks quietly, reflectively. “Would you be surprised if I told you it was merely a means to an end for me? That this entire event was entirely self-serving?”

“Yes,” John answers. He is looking into his tea mug, but he shrugs then, and smiles. “Maybe?” He grins. “Alright – no. I wouldn’t be surprised. So what do you get from it? Besides the obvious benefit of Anderson having to call you Sir Sherlock?”

“Anderson died two years ago. Drowned in Spain on holiday.” Sherlock speaks quietly, nearly without inflection, and John looks away.

“Bad example. I’m – I’m sorry. Obviously missed that one.”

Sherlock shrugs. “Substitute Mycroft, then.” John smiles, but Sherlock shakes his head. “Actually, that never even crossed my mind. No – the reason I agreed to this ceremony was to get to precisely this moment. Here. Now.”

John stirs his tea then places the spoon carefully on the edge of the saucer.

“You went through a bloody knighting ceremony for no other reason than to have tea with me.”

“Well, the champagne at the reception was lovely.”

He says it with a slight lilt to his voice, and John has to smile, and to agree. The champagne _had_ been lovely.

“Alright. You went through an entire knighting ceremony for the champagne - _and_ to have tea with me.”

“Tea is a good start, don’t you think?” 

Actually, John _does_ think that.

He nods. “It’s been a long day,” he says. “It’s nice to sit.” He pauses. “Just the two of us. Sherlock – ”

Sherlock looks up. “I think it’s time we talked. I’ve something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

John isn’t sure he’s ready for that kind of talk. Chatting is good. Catching up. Reliving favourite cases. Even reminiscing about Anderson. Safe talk. Comfortable talk. Sliding back into the way things were, as if the last five years were a mere blip on the chart, an anomaly corrected.

But there’s a serious intensity he’s not used to seeing in Sherlock, and while he’s inclined to brush it aside and relive the old days until they’re blue in the face, he realises that Sherlock needs this, and he sighs.

“Go on, then.”

Sherlock reaches across the table and calmly, seriously, takes John’s hand.

John stares at Sherlock’s fingers. 

“John – I know. I know what happened that day. What Mary told you –before the accident.”

If there are any words John expects to hear, they are not these. His hand, enveloped still in Sherlock’s, trembles, and he continues to stare at Sherlock’s fingers, refusing to understand.

“I’ve never told anyone,” he manages. He looks up at Sherlock, challenging him. “You _can’t_ know.” 

But he does, and John sees it in his eyes. And he wonders why Sherlock is still holding his hand, and why he has picked this exact moment to do so.

Sherlock looks down again, and squeezes John’s fingers. “She came to me first, John. That very morning. She wanted to be sure – before she spoke with you.” He swallows and John watches the movement of his Adam’s apple. “She told me she was planning to leave you, and wanted my assurances I would be there for you when she did.”

John raises his eyes again, studying Sherlock’s face. His heart is beating unsteadily, and he wonders if Sherlock knows this, can feel it. He shakes his head slowly and gives the barest of smiles, strained, a smile that does not reach his eyes. “Knowing my wife, she said a lot more than that.”

Sherlock returns the smile in kind.

“And while her statement surprised and shocked me, I quickly assured her that you were always welcome in 221B – that I could have your room cleared out in a matter of hours….”

John closes his eyes, shaking his head. He can well imagine what came next.

Sherlock’s grip on his hand tightens. “John – she quickly set me straight. She said the second bedroom wasn’t even remotely a consideration – that you were hopelessly in love with me, and didn’t know it, but no more in love with me than I with you.” He rushes through this confession, the string of words falling from his lips in a single breath. He sucks in another. “With Kate leaving for uni, she thought the time was right to move on so you … _we_ … could move on as well.”

John licks his dry lips and reaches for the glass of water he’s hardly touched. He tries to process this new information while Sherlock falls silent, still holding his hand on the table. Would Mary have told him she’d spoken with Sherlock? If she’d lived another minute? Another hour? Another day? 

“John – John, please.” Sherlock’s fingers dig into the palm of his hand. “I tried to tell her – I did. That you would react exactly as you did, no matter my answer. That if she wanted to end the marriage, she could _not_ set such impossible conditions. _Yes,_ we could share a flat. Yes, we could tear about London together solving cases. We could go right on being what we already were, but with you living back at 221B where – ”

He cuts himself off suddenly, and John looks away, out the window into the near-darkness. Mary _had_ come to him. Had asked for a divorce. And that meant….

“But she came to me. She told me to go to you.”

Sherlock’s voice drops even lower. “I told her you were decidedly heterosexual, John. And that I – I didn’t need any additional entanglements.”

John waits, eyes raised now to Sherlock’s face. It seems ridiculous, in the face of all that was never said before, and all that is laid upon the table now, to dissimulate. 

“I imagine she wore you down, then?”

John feels his thumb running over Sherlock’s palm. He isn’t consciously moving it, but it’s worked itself into a rhythm he seems incapable of stopping. 

“She wouldn’t leave, John.” Even now, the memory clearly causes him anguish. With a type of rare insight he seldom exhibits, John realises that he is not the only one who’s been plagued by guilt these past five years.

“She could be quite persistent.”

“And she was always right,” adds Sherlock. “Or believed herself to be. She set out to prove a point to me, and when, an hour into our discussion, I still hadn’t agreed, she pushed her way into my personal space and kissed me.”

He whispers the last words, and John jerks his eyes upward again. Sherlock stares at him – face blank – until John’s face melts into a smile, one that reaches his eyes this time. “Jesus, Sherlock – no wonder you gave in,” he says.

“She crawled into my chair,” Sherlock continues, as if John hadn’t spoken at all. “She wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear. She said ‘Don’t look at me, Sherlock. Look at that chair over there and pretend I’m someone else altogether.’ And I – _Damnit_ , John! She was wearing your jacket. The green one – the one you used to wear all the time. It smelled of you.”

He says this as if he is confessing a sin while justifying its commission. And John doesn’t quite know what to do with any of it. It is easier for him to accept that his wife crawled into Sherlock’s chair, straddled him and kissed him than to accept that Sherlock is here, now, recounting it to him.

Nothing makes sense. 

But John is no fool. When he agreed to attend the ceremony with Sherlock, he knew he was agreeing to much, much more. All the preparations – the new clothing, the fittings, the YouTube videos of investiture ceremonies and palace protocol. There was nothing casual about this meeting, nothing unplanned. Not on his part – and certainly not on Sherlock’s.

“You’ve been wallowing in guilt for five years, John,” Sherlock says. “But none of this is your fault. It would be more accurate to blame me. I was weak. I gave in, yet I had made a vow....”

John interrupts, because he hates seeing Sherlock like this, desperate and out of sorts, and because he has something to say now, something rather important.

“I remember that vow, Sherlock.” The movement of his thumb on Sherlock’s palm ceases, and he grips Sherlock’s fingers, anchoring himself to this new and impossible reality as if it were about to slip quietly away. “I believe you said that neither you nor _Mary_ would ever let me down, and you had a lifetime ahead to prove it.” His gaze moves from their joined hands, to the flickering candle beside them, to Sherlock’s arm, his neck, his unreadable eyes. His voice is steady, but there is nothing else steady about him. He’s flailing to keep afloat in a sea of regret, and Sherlock’s hand is his lifeline. A curl of desire kindles in his heart, more ethereal than physical, but it makes him lean forward nonetheless, as he understands, at last, that for Sherlock it was John – or no one – and that Mary, his Mary, _their_ Mary, had seen it, understood it, solved it, and had died trying to put them back together.

“Mary’s life is over,” he says now, his thumb beginning its slow stroke on Sherlock’s hand once again. “And I think I’ve paid my dues. We both have.” He swallows, and if he believed in those things, he’d have sworn that Mary’s hand settled over their joined ones on the table. But he doesn’t believe those sort of things, doesn’t believe in ghosts – though once he did, until Sherlock deposed him of that notion. “So – a lifetime, Sherlock?”

It is the strangest of proposals, arrived at sideways and backwards and without the customary words and symbolic artifacts. John hasn’t considered anything past this moment, and if he hears a faded echo of laughter behind him, or smells the scent of Clair de la Lune, those things are no more unreal than this moment, holding Sherlock’s hand in the very place – the very booth – where years ago they sealed the direction of the next two decades of their lives.

“A lifetime,” Sherlock agrees, placing his other hand atop John’s. “Or whatever is left of it.”

They could stay like this forever, men past their prime, out past dark, drinking tea gone cold. It’s easier than confronting whatever comes next, whatever lies outside that door. But Sherlock, it seems, has waited long enough and has gone through a bloody investiture ceremony and exchanged pleasantries with the King of England just to get to this moment. He’s managed to pull John Watson out of his well of misery, he’s confessed his sin, his desire. He’s sat through a congratulatory meal with friends, and put up with a candle on their table.

He’s gone a lifetime without entanglements. 

He stands, unfolding himself from the booth, and extends a hand to John to help him stand, then hands him his cane.

Everything has changed, yet nothing at all. Sherlock raises a finger and a cab appears, and when they get out at 221B, John mentally counts the seventeen steps inside leading up to the flat, calculating how long it will take to struggle upstairs. Sherlock unlocks the door, and they step inside. The stairway is dark, and as John reaches up to flip on the switch, Sherlock moves to Mrs. Hudson’s door and inserts a second key in the lock. He pushes the door open and flicks on a light inside, then beckons to John.

John limps past Sherlock and pauses just inside the door. Mrs. Hudson lives with her niece now, but John expected to see her furniture, arranged just where it always had been, and to smell tea and biscuits, and hear the telly in the background.

But he sees instead two chairs facing each other in the sitting room, and nearly empty bookshelves, neat as a pin. Cardboard boxes, overflowing with the detritus of Sherlock’s life, are stacked against two walls. The skull is on the nearly bare mantel, the sofa pushed against a wall. And against the window that fronts the street, the window covered with lace curtains from a bygone day, rests a familiar violin atop a scattering of sheet music.

John moves to the chairs, and settles in his. It is every bit as comfortable as he expected it to be. He looks at Sherlock, who is standing in the doorway, watching him, nervous perhaps, expectant.

“You didn’t send out a change of address,” John says. He picks up the remote for the telly which is resting on the arm of his chair, studies it, puts it back down again.

“Only moved yesterday,” Sherlock replies. He nods at the boxes. “I still have some unpacking to do.” He heads toward the kitchen. “Tea?”

John nods, then shifts in his chair, his eyes following Sherlock as he puts on the kettle. Sherlock looks up at him and smiles, then picks up a mug, glances inside it, then turns it upside down and shakes it out.

Nothing has changed – except Sherlock is actually _making_ the tea. In Mrs. Hudson’s old flat.

“Sherlock – why did you change flats?”

He already knows, of course, and it is one more unbelievable, incomprehensible bit in a day of impossibilities. 

The stairs. His cane. His leg.

Sherlock pokes his head back into the sitting room. “Please, John, _please_ tell me you are able to deduce that one on your own.”

But John doesn’t respond. When Sherlock presses a mug of hot tea into his hands a few minutes later, he reaches up and grasps Sherlock’s shirtfront with his free hand, and scoots the tea onto the table beside him with the other. He tugs, and finds that Sherlock’s knees fit perfectly onto the chair beside his legs, and his hands rest comfortably on his shoulders as he settles, grinning a small boy’s smile, onto John’s lap.

John stares at his lips. 

Lips that soon slide against his, and pretend to know exactly what they are doing.

Lips that taste like tea, like London, like everything John imagines heaven might be.

_TBC_


	4. Epilogue: And Beyond

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And chapter four is a wrap - a bit of an epilogue, three years later.

“Yes – you have to go.” John stands in the doorway of the sitting room, half-dressed, a tie in each hand. He can move about the apartment without his cane now, thanks to Sherlock, who, after an extensive amount of research, settled on lap swimming, and when John seemed disinclined to participate, offered to go with him.

He didn’t intend to actually get in the pool, but he’s in far better shape himself now two and a half years later because John stood firm and refused to get wet until Sherlock donned swim shorts and got in first.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t.” Sherlock pushes his chair back from the table. He’s been photographing volcanic ash samples with his new microscope with scientific-quality digital camera – that had set then back more than a few quid – and doesn’t look at all prepared to meet the car which is scheduled to arrive in forty-five minutes. He stands and stretches his neck to one side, then the other, then twists it, owl-like, before returning his gaze to John. His eyes settle on the ties. “Neither,” he says.

John throws up his hands in frustration.

“I don’t know why you bother, John,” Sherlock says. He takes the ties from him as he walks by, and John follows him slowly into the second bedroom, which serves as an enormous clothes cupboard, mostly for Sherlock. There is no tie catalogue to accompany the sock catalogue, mostly because Sherlock hates ties and wears them only when he can’t be admitted somewhere without one. He tosses the offending articles on a chair and spends six seconds scrutinizing the remaining ties before selecting one of an indescribable colour, then looping it around John's neck and tying it in a perfect half Windsor. He adjusts the collar, smoothing it down as John does what he always does when Sherlock dresses him - stands perfectly still, back straight, at attention.

When John checks his reflection in the dressing room mirror, he frowns at the tie. It's tied expertly and the length is perfect, but the colour is just so….

“You do realise this is the ugliest tie you own, don't you? It's so ugly I bet even Lestrade wouldn't wear it. It looks like you took it off a corpse that was covered with leaves and left to rot in the woods.”

He's limping into the sitting room as he speaks. Sherlock is back at the microscope. He's wearing a dress shirt now, and has an equally ugly tie looped around his own neck. His hair is slightly less messy, and John spots a small velvet jeweler’s box on the table beside him.

Sherlock pulls idly at the end of his own tie. “Last two Christmas gifts from Mycroft,” he says. “I think he fancies himself _funny_.”

John laughs. “Alright then. I doubt you'll be getting any more ties from him if we actually wear these things.”

“Well, we wouldn't want to overshadow him on his big day,” Sherlock says. 

“There'll be photographs,” John reminds him. “You'll be in the papers - you're always in the papers.”

Sherlock looks up at John rather sharply, then sighs in resignation. Five minutes later they are both wearing perfectly lovely ties, and Sherlock reluctantly abandons his microscope and puts on his coat and shoes.

Sherlock is in the bathroom checking himself in the mirror when John enters holding the velvet box.

“May I?” 

Sherlock looks at the box in his hand. He's not worn the insignia since the day of his own investiture, but appearing as a guest at a similar ceremony without it would be unforgivable, a slap on the face to the palace and the monarchy. 

“I’d best look up the exact placement. Mycroft will have my head if it's off by a millimetre. At least my award is more prestigious than his,” he grumbles.

He reaches into his pocket for his mobile but John catches his wrist.

“I know where it goes” he says, voice steady and quiet.

Then he opens the box and takes out a platinum band, and slides it onto Sherlock's finger.

“I wouldn't want this day to be _all_ about Mycroft,” he says as Sherlock studies the ring. His eyes and face are softer than normal and very decidedly pleased. He gives the ring an experimental turn on his finger as John continues speaking.

“You can get me one if you'd like, and we don't have to have a special ceremony, but we are definitely making this official. Kate is threatening to move in with us if I keep losing weight.”

“Will she pick up my cleaning?”

John has apparently tuned him out as he continues without pause.

“And I want to be the one to make your medical decisions. Mycroft….”

“Always defers to you.” Sherlock has taken the ring off and is holding it up to the light, studying the inscription with a faint smile. “And I'm not arguing, John.” He puts the ring back on his finger and takes John by the wrist. He doesn't drag him to the sitting room - John’s leg is, after all, severely compromised even with the gains he’s made these past years. But he hurries him as best he can, then presses him down into his chair and fetches his violin.

“I don't think we have time for the piece you're about to claim you wrote for this occasion,” John says.

“I'm horribly offended,” Sherlock replies as he takes out his violin and places it on the table beside the case. He's not offended in the least, of course. Their banter is often like this, John picking at Sherlock's ego while Sherlock highlights their lopsided intellects.

John rolls his eyes, and Sherlock, who has peeled back the worn lining of the case, extracts a polished platinum ring in exactly John's size and holds it up, undeniably pleased with himself, then slips it on the astounded John’s finger.

“I knew you'd take your time deciding when to present it to me once the jeweler had it ready, so I borrowed it and had a copy made for you.” He is putting his violin away now, carefully settling it into its faded and worn fabric nest. He closes the case. “I only made one minor change to yours. And please don't ask how I knew, or how I found where you'd hidden it. Suffice it is to say that I want this as well, and am glad Kate helped bring you around. She was extremely helpful, despite the fact that she does worry needlessly about your health. And whether you eat. And how often I make you go to the market. She’d have you as fat as Mycroft if she had her way, and have all my experiments cleared out of the refrigerator as well.”

John processes all of this, but in the end can only smile fondly. Sherlock is rather militant about his weight, believing that additional pounds will compromise his already limited mobility. He has never said as much, but John knows he actually misses mad dashes across rooftops and the occasional drop off a fire escape. 

No.

He misses doing these things with John at his back, on his heels, by his side. And while he has encouraged John to do all he can to improve his mobility, he himself has radically altered his own behavior, his own living space, his own activities, to accommodate John.

“I should be really angry at you for setting me up,” John says, but there is a fondness in his voice he cannot hide. “And Sherlock - if you wanted to make our relationship formal, you could have asked me anytime.”

“ _You_ asked me nearly three years ago,” Sherlock says. He has settled in his own chair and is sitting with legs crossed and fingers splayed, admiring the ring. He closes his hand into a fist and tilts it so that he can better see the ring and how it rests between his knuckles.

John watches this, relieved that Sherlock seems so ready to wear the ring. 

“You never mentioned wanting a ring. Wanting to formalize our - this.”

Sherlock brings his hands up to his face, steepling his fingers, then closing them and resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. He gives John all of his attention, then, studying him in a way that makes John feel as if he’s about to go to Buckingham Palace in nothing but a sheet.

“You promised me a lifetime, John, and I’m here for that - with or without the blessings of church or state or a ring on my finger.” 

“But you wanted it,” John persists. He watches as Sherlock studies his hand again, gives the ring another turn on his finger. It is somewhat loose - they’ll have to had it resized to fit so he doesn’t lose it down the drain or inside a bowl of intestines. 

His ring, of course, fits perfectly.

“I wanted you back after Mary died,” Sherlock says, and he is much more serious, more sombre, than usual. “And it took me five years to work up to doing something about that. You’ve beat me by two years, John.”

“It might have been five if you hadn’t got Kate involved,” John says. He scoots forward in his chair and holds out his hand.

“Five years is a very long time to wait,” Sherlock says. He scoots forward himself, then takes John’s hand, and entwines their fingers. 

They stare at each, two very besotten old men who are seldom caught in moments like this. Then Sherlock smiles, and John loves how that smile changes Sherlock’s face and makes his eyes dance. Sherlock is pressing his lips to John’s knuckles when the door pushes open behind them and Mycroft Holmes himself enters with all the pomp and ceremony of an old man about to be knighted by the King of England himself. This new king is far more popular than the last, and this will be his first investiture ceremony as king, and Mycroft counts it as a bit of a coup over his younger brother.

“Please quit drooling over each other like a pair of demented orangutans and come to the car at once,” he demands. Sherlock lets John’s hand drop, and turns to face his brother. John gets to his feet and reaches for his cane - he’ll need it more than he’d like on this long day. 

“Your insignia, Sherlock. Your _insignia!_ We discussed this.”

Mycroft stands still and resolute, and John rolls his eyes and produces said article from his pocket. He hands it to Sherlock, who takes it in his left hand and walks over to Mycroft, brandishing it with a flourish of burnished platinum.

Mycroft eyes the ring as he pins the insignia to Sherlock’s jacket. His eyes dart over to John, whose hand is wrapped around the head of his cane. John raises an eyebrow, and Mycroft smooths his hand over Sherlock’s lapel, lingering over the ornate pin.

“Another reason to celebrate the day,” he says. “Though it would seem you two are trying to upstage me.” He unbuttons one button of Sherlock’s coat, but Sherlock immediately buttons it again without comment. “Is there any reason you are wearing wedding rings? Did I miss my invitation to the ceremony?”

“Engagement rings,” Sherlock corrects. “Which we will continue to wear after we are married.”

Mycroft shakes his head in mock exasperation as they make their way to the car waiting outside. 

It is hours later when John remembers that Sherlock said he’d made one small change to the ring he’d copied for John. He is lying in bed reading, waiting while Sherlock spends far too long in the shower. He puts his book aside, looks at the ring, then works it off his finger and holds it in the palm of his hand. It looks exactly like the one he gave Sherlock - same shape and colour and design. He holds it to the light and squints to study the inscription. He’d chosen _a lifetime_ for Sherlock’s. Obvious, perhaps, but he could think of no other sentiment, no other phrase, that would resound as well with Sherlock.

He tilts his own ring and the words dance into existence.

_A lifetime...and beyond._

John blinks, and reads the words again. 

Sherlock is not a man who believes in deities and afterlives and ethereal planes. He’s a man of science, a man or logic, of reason, of conclusions based on evidence and proof. 

Sherlock Holmes may not believe in deities, or heaven, but he believes in something. In someone. _In John._

He doesn’t need it, but John holds the evidence, the proof, in the palm of his hand.

 

_Fin_


End file.
